Thousands of people may have died on September 11, 2001 due to air quality in New York. The city of New York revealed on Friday, the 11th, the date marking 25 years since the attack, 170,000 pages of previously undisclosed documents. Among them is information showing that authorities at the time knew that air quality after the attacks posed health risks, despite having assured the public and first responders that the air was safe.
The city published the documents in a public access portal, which includes reports on air quality and correspondence between authorities. Mayor Zohran Mamdani allocated $34 million from the city budget for the creation of the portal with the records.
Many documents were stored in 68 boxes in a city hall office, and many were only discovered last year by employees. The initial version available on the portal includes the document known as the "Harding Memorandum," sent to then-Deputy Mayor Robert Harding in 2001, which offers information about health risks related to air quality after the collapse of the twin towers.
